Drowning in the Ink Well of Reality
by Gabriel Tonic
Summary: Theories beyond therories. Mine is a complete work of fiction. The claimed deceased conspiracy of the friendship between Gerard Way and Bert McCracken.


**Drowning in the Ink Well of Reality**

Chapter One of One.

Contemplation Before Reaction.

--

"Cause love's such an old fashioned word and love  
dares you to care for the people on the edge of the night,  
and love dares you to change our ways of caring about ourselves,  
this is our last dance. This is our last dance. This is ourselves….  
Under Pressure."

Pressure… Of course he had no train of thought leading in the direction that his last dance had been swirled with the person he'd spent his life with; he'd given his life to. He had no fatal inkling that after clapping in unison on stage with that man, would he dissolve it all into sorrow and argument. He'd never have dreamed of looking through the tarnished holes in the box, ice sloshing through his tin layers of clothes as he sank. He had never even known where to duck when he saw the collision coming. But he didn't blame it on the other- it was never Gerard's fault.

XXXXX

"Pressure!"  
Bert grinned over to Gerard, who incessantly clapped his hands in unison to Bert, finishing up the last few lines of the Queen's cover song; _Under Pressure. _A few more rifts and chords and beats from the drum and it'd be concluded soon enough. Adequately, the rhythm in back died off after a while, and Gerard had Bert commuted in a hug.

The host of the MTV Unplugged show made some witty, humorous remark to the camera and audience, but Bert and Gerard has dispatched from the stage and were on the brink of reality, honestly focusing on none but each other and the vortex that locked themselves in through a silly, little waterfall of love. Either it was the love as in actual, true love, or the love that was faux and commanded to fool two people so deeply in each other that they lost all sight of the real world.

Their love was a mixture of the two.

Gerard popped open the protected cap to an orange jar of Xanax drugs. He stuffed around five of them into his wordless mouth, scarfing them down his throat with no intensions of harm entering his mind, only seeing the pills as his medication to comfort and happiness, and that it could on liven up his spirits. Of course, he internally new it was only an illusion. But that's why he was taking them.

"You should like, quit that stuff," Bert suggested with a grin and a handful of vodka cupped between his fingers, solemn beyond his pleased expressions, and Gerard could tell. Gerard shrugged, smirking with that painted smile of plaster carved into his lips as he placed a lit cigarette between the top and bottom slivers of his mouth. "We, as a whole, you and me together, work in an epitome. And this stuff fleshes out that epitome. 'Sides, I've seen you hooked on worse shit than this."

Bert giggled and gave Gerard a kiss on the bottom on the man's lip, tilting Gerard's chin up with the top of the vodka bottle. "Yes, but our epitome might explode in its limit if you carry on like this. You know, the glow will give out and we'll be too lost in each other's sadness that our time is over." His sterling chainsaw blue eyes hooked into Gerard's flushed hazel orbs. "And as for the fuck I've done, don't get near it. I could get addicted to _organic _sleeping pills or something at this point."

Gerard chuckled. "I don't doubt that, actually," he sincerely choked out with a laugh of medicated glee, getting pretty loosened up by the pills he had just taken. Bert tipped the edge of his vodka bottle to its side, and incisively let it drench Gerard's hair, leaving his locks in strings and head ringing from the stench of alcohol. "What the hell?" He glowered, sticking his tongue to the corner of one hair strand as to take in the liquor shower. Bert laughed. "You're to effing hootttt; I had to cool you down."

Gerard scrunched up his face, going as emotionally hidden as if a black, blinding bar had been strapped to his eyes, making his expressions impossible to decode. "I… don't… think… that it'll be long. I mean, before I die… from… this…… Stuff," he clearly yet hesitantly meant to whisper, pausing on a few vowel sounds and words. Bert pretty much let shock take over his reaction, letting go of his vaguely possessed liquor bottle and standing ground as it smashed into small pieces and spilled as thickly as blood in a pool cuddling around his feet.

"H- Huh?" He sounded, knowing perfectly well what Gerard had tried to make out strongly. The sense of it all just refused to fit into the huge puzzle of the mess taking place. "Yeah," Gerard murmured in a quieter way than Bert had heard Gerard speak in before. "I don't want to be stuck on this shit, I don't want it, I don't need it, and I don't want to die, but like… I can't live on these addictions." Bert clasped hands with himself behind his back, whether it being a good luck policy or just to restrain his swelling depression from molding into the eyes of Gerard. Either way, it wasn't working.

"Nah… no. No, you won't. Hah!" Bert tried to add something of a bright outlook to his fueled explanation, drowning through the thick liquid of stress and anxiety. It was like screaming underwater. Whatever he said was just going to make it all worse, and put his self esteem way far down, down from whatever it was now, which consisted of niquitin and un-prescribed drugs. "I've been into these kinds of stuff for forever; it won't hurt you as a starter." He shrugged in denial, gotten past the point of disheartened promises, having excelled bygone the stress of insecure penalty.

Gerard shrugged lethargically, pressing his fingers to his eye sockets, and rubbing them with a conviction of the burn they endured with his traumatic touch. "I guess. But you'd have to adapt to the lack of Gerard, which would be a lot worse than a puppet's vacation in which the marionette never returns. If said marionette has a cut string, its master will reject it, very callously. Like… if you can't handle that then when I do come out of this semblance, we need to work on diluting your reliance on me and put your memory out of ignominy." He wasn't lax of faith in Bert; he just had no entreaty to wound Bert, because he knew if Bert stepped tight into his fabric soles, he'd qualify the same way; not wanting the other heartbroken over a quantity of severe, stupid mistakes. In the genuine moral of God, they had been checkers in that set up of role play a couple of times, Bert being the drug dominant he was, and he had offered Gerard freedom from his compulsion on illegal pills, which was all Gerard was doing in counter. Yet this time Bert's lips were pursed in a seal to each other, unable to break apart without peeling the skin off the top half of his lips, or relentlessly chapping the bottom half.

After a minute (lifetime;) of no account from Bert, Gerard made an alcoholic trail of footsteps over the polished wood floor, conveying his follower backwards, Bert's heart had collapsed to the ground like a smashed guitar thrown into the hands of a careless instrumentalist. Those words were glued to his forehead and read across his face, the words Gerard had told him so far back, _"Don't allow your life to be hung on a string around the neck of a person who will unlatch the knot _," saying it so indignantly and soberly at the exhibition of collected torment, his body twisted around in different shapes by people who only wished to use and destroy it. The declaration had been forgotten as Gerard continued to back away from Bert, feeling like the raindrops spreading out on a car windshield, relying on each other to cling as one, believing in the assured loyalty of one another, until a single drop slid to the ground, leaving the rest to wait.

Gerard began to quote Bright Eyes' lyrics without posing what he was doing, but using the phrases to sullen extensions, entirely candid with his gallant choice of recycling lyrics from a band most of the world was sorely omitted from. "If I don't come back," he warned. "I MEAN!" he hastily replaced in the spotlight of the horrible words he had just abused. "If I get side tracked…" he sighed and watched the piano chords being struck through Bert's eyes, the notes of the instrument swept into a red ocean by a lightly floating gale. Gerard averted his eyesight before he was obliged to see the fate of the chords. "It's only because I /wanted/ to."

Bert's optimism completely faltered at that second, a red-rouge mountain leading to no where but the airless horizon. His only excuse was that Gerard would make it out of all of his building cards alive, without pulling out an Ace and taking the easy ways out. "You… you're selfish," Bert accused, eyes reading from a scale blue to speckled gray, reveling no sensibility to Gerard's lacked bliss. "Ugh," Gerard argued back, "listen. I know I'm shallow but… so are you," he choked. "I don't know…" His eyes angrily narrowed. "I could probably quit all of this if I wasn't under the influence of you."

Bert felt like he had been slapped in the face by a wake up call, the kind controlled by a rough dictator who was destined to seek out you weakness and plant a bomb through your clothes, the weaponry filled with violence and senseless anger and the note to truth that was hidden behind an angry face and reactions drenched with a layer of angst. "You're just a little shit, Gerard," he muttered, barely noticing he was saying anything. "You never cared about any fucking 'we', just your pretty little head and your painted hands and your skilled talent and your rock star life. You /never/ needed me by your waist or called me to your death bed each time your angelic wings broke off. But you'll never cease your addictions with just stepping away from me. You'll fail your faith." The ends of each sentence was hardly audible, words spoken like a puppet's wooden mouth being strung open and let it slip closed, again.

Gerard's bottom lip quivered slightly, eyes filled with nonchalant anger, helpless arguments of sorrow and trust floating through the wrath of a tsunami which were his lengthily thoughts. "That's not true…" he spoke through one breath, irritated at his own antagonism. "Sober might have to wait until I've drunk this night down, but it'll show. Now, wretch, get out." He hated the sound of his voice slurred and unable to be risen about that irksome squeak. It was a second ago, not months, that Gerard had found his own heart attached to Bert's. It had to be that some time at birth, their souls had been ripped in half, one half of each given to each other, shielded in protecting arms. Moments ago when Bert wouldn't let Gerard out of his sight. The moments had passed; Gerard now would pay to have Bert taken from him.

"Get the fuck out of my face," Gerard growled from his teeth, voice increasing. "You don't deserve it. I'll accept my own offer. I'll stay away from your scum and not succumb to the monster you are. By August thirteenth, I promise you, I'll be clean and sober. And then you'll see that I can manage much better than without you all up my mouth. And that you just pull me down." There was no solution at this point. None but to stay away from Bert from now on. And Bert said nothing as Gerard rushed out of the back door, out of the concert hall, out of Bert's misery.

When he heard the clatter of the echoing soles of converse shoes splatter against the chalk-painted sidewalk, Gerard's hands fumbling through his pockets to tear out his sterling car keys, Bert unlocked his angered face, the one he was only putting on as an act, muttering "I know you /will/ get sober, I know you will," like a confession to a mirror world reflected off his guilt. He let himself fall to the crystal ground, swallowing unconditional weeping. He wasn't going to cry, he had done the right thing, by not letting Gerard destroy his upcoming life on unneeded injections, and the only way he could clear Gerard's head was by letting him go, letting him renew himself, and convincing him to not rely on the shit Bert was on. It really could fuck up a guy's life, and Bert of all people, could personally tell you that. It could kill Gerard if he overdosed in a blind depression caused by life and more of the drugs' inflictions, and the only way he'd be able to quit before any of that was if he wanted to prove his newest enemy wrong. Bert never stopped loving Gerard after their little fight, because he couldn't let go of the nagging stress on his soul that had Gerard's name over it. And besides. Their fight was so Bert could keep his love secure.

Jepha, Bert's band's bass guitarist, opened the main door, opposite to the one Gerard had taken off out, but he barely even noticed, and he placed a hand on Bert's shoulder, automatically knowing something was wrong, as Bert motionlessly stared at the marble on the ground, feet spread in odd directions behind his back, not taking much care into the world swimming around him. Bert never cried alcoholic tears, never, unless he was overly joyed, like the first time their band had been accepted, but no matter how horrible something was, you never saw his awful tears, especially when indulged from stomach to head in alcohol. But yes… by this point he was really crying.

XXXXX

He cut circular holes into the metal, barred cage. He had no intentions of simply suffocating, although the already cut holes on the box would easily provide the salty, polluted water to fill his clouded lungs. He wanted the holes there to emotionally (and physically) hurt himself. He knew he'd change his mind right as he was sinking, or just above the surface of the water, bobbing up and down on the top until he lost consciousness, and want to get into the secure grip of a chilling world, and run to tell Gerard the truth, and that was a promise. The extra, hand cut holes in the cage would on tease him; let him know there was a tiny bit of hope in the spectacle for him, but it'd never save his life.

Bert threw the metal pliers or whatever-the-fuck the tool he had been using off the side of the sea wall and miles deep into the ocean. He'd carefully hand picked the deepest point of the ocean near a sea wall, where he'd most likely have drowned before the cage hit the bottom of the sea floor- if he was lucky. But what would people conclude it to? That it was a lobster trap set, then figure out they caught a Bert? (Haha that made me laugh.) Maybe a diver would discover his skeleton years later, or he'd be eaten by fish and never be found.

What would Gerard think?

Bert curled into the cage, and pulled a lock set at random (which he didn't read the combination to after buying) out of his pocket, and latched it onto the door of the cage, trying not to get his arm caught in the door, then put his fingers through two little holes he had created in the bars, and began rocking to the edge of the leveled se wall. Because what would he have done besides that? Ask some guy walking past to push him in? Besides, no one was around except a group of rabid seagulls which didn't attack him yet, making this a lot easier. The winds and waves were heavily guarded, so maybe there was a hurricane coming. That'd diminish his body after he was dead.

His skin slid across the sun-beaten, rough cement and peeled off enough of his skin to naturally bring glossy tears to his eyes, and the water would sting his cut back as he hit it. But he kept rolling towards that edge, eyes shaking open and closed, not sure which way to take this best. But he didn't know if he wanted to end this as peacefully as possible, or very painfully to even out the emotional push that pressured him beyond his visual ocean of shame.

The fall caught him by surprise. He was trying to rock the cage and his body off the edge, and then he was falling and falling, then hitting the water with a forceful plunge, and was racked against the sides of the metal bars, trying to push his body back into the indulgence of oxygen. He had planned it correct- right as he was sinking, he'd want to stay alive, but have no more power over fate anymore. It was a great plan, it just didn't seem so pleasurable from his struggling point of view.

He held his breath, hitting the sand at the bottom of the ocean more quickly then he had estimated. Or maybe he had just held his breath longer than his body had ever let him. The cage smashing against his back on the sea floor knocked the breath out of his cheeks, and he gasped for any form of air. His lungs were disappointed. Instead of sweet air, and strange, foreign substance burned them, and chilled his insides.

Bert shook violently, only cutting the rusting metal bars deeper into his skin, scarring up his pale yellow flesh. He tried to bend the bars, tried to push through the breaking metal with his back bone, making a dent that barely could have let him slip through. He shut his mouth again; swallowing the acid water left by his teeth, and tried to break through again, getting enough of a hole he could swim through, but not come out unscathed. In one desperate attempt, he pushed off from the sea ground, loosing his breath-holding ability as soon as he sank right down again.

He pulled off his Nike© sneakers and heavy waterlogged jeans, not bothering with his light shirt that was stuck to his chest by the freezing cold water. Again, he attempted to push off the sea floor, but he was already too weak to really move. Opening his mouth wide, he took in a gulp of water, which took over his system, pouring polluted water over his intestines and filling up his lungs with absorbed water and trading water for blood in his heart, motionlessly exploding in his stomach, and he sank into the pit of sand without closing his widened eyes to shut out the world forever.

His war was now over because he had drowned life away.

XXXXX

Bert's shotgun blue eyes stood on end, lined with sweat, as he trembled sadistically, looking around the dark room dotted with vibrant Christmas lights that hung off a scraggly cut tree and a flushed white mantel place.

His hands gripped into something soft and fleshy, supported by thick, conjoined bones on which he was laying. "Nng?" the half sleeping figure sounded as he brushed Bert's hands away from his ribs. "Bert?" he asked in a hushed tone. "What do you want?" His voice wasn't rude or angry, but curiosity and exhaustion were shone through his tone.

Bert's pajama clothed body was rested on Gerard's chest, who was sprawled over a soft couch in his brother's apartment. Gerard stared at the presents lacing the tree's trimmings tiredly, as he awaited Bert's excuse for freaking out and grabbing his stomach in a painful pinch.

"Sorry," Bert apologized. "And, nah, it's nothing. But… Merry Christmas." He smiled in Gerard's face, who whistled back a "Merry Christmas."

Bert rolled off Gerard because it must have killed Gerard's body, and so Gerard could console the man with his outstretched arms. "Goodnight again," Bert sighed in a transparent smile. "I'm glad you've been sober for a month."

Gerard grinned. "And _I'm glad I didn't die before I met you. _"


End file.
